The scientist credited as being the first to convince Tony Blair of the urgency of the climate crisis has accused green activists of being Luddites who risk setting back the fight against global warming.

In an interview with the Guardian today Sir David King, who stepped down last month after seven years as the government's chief scientific adviser, says any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change - including nuclear power - is one of "utter hopelessness".

He says: "There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves 'green' are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century."

He characterises their argument as "let's get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century".

"People say 'well, we'll just use less energy.' Come on," he says. "And then there's the real world, where everyone is aspiring to the sort of standard of living that we have, which is based on a large energy consumption."

King calls global warming the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever faced, and famously, in a 2004 article in the journal Science, berated the US for its inaction, describing climate change as "more serious even than the threat of terrorism". But his vocal support for nuclear power and genetically modified foods has led to tensions with environmental campaigners.

In a new book, The Hot Topic, he invites further hostility, arguing that aviation has been unfairly scapegoated, and that a localist approach to grocery shopping, aimed at reducing food miles, may sometimes result in bigger carbon dioxide emissions than purchasing food transported from overseas. Making people feel guilty about their energy use, the book argues, "makes them less likely to act, not more". "What I'm looking for are technological solutions to a technologically driven problem, so the last thing we must do is eschew technology as we move forward," says King, 68.

His book prescribes a barrage of technological measures based on nuclear energy, wind power, cutting emissions from cars and buildings, increasing the global area of solar panels by a factor of 700, and capturing and storing emissions from fossil fuel power generation. Only with a nuclear component, he argues, might Britain "just about manage" to reach its commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% on 1990 levels by 2050.

He recalls how he sparked fury at a meeting of Blair's ministers when he refused to agree to stay silent in public about his pro-nuclear views, even though the cabinet had, at the time, opted not to press ahead with plans for new power stations. "Let me say that John Prescott's reaction was almost violent," he says.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said it was King, not green activists, who was living in the past. "We need science to get us out of the climate change hole we're in - that's why Greenpeace wants to see research funding piled into the cutting-edge low-carbon technologies that can deliver deep emissions cuts in a very short timeframe," he said.

"We're talking about technical solutions that can also be safely spread to every country in the world, no matter how unstable. Nuclear power isn't that technology, but Sir David wants to take us back to the 1950s, the last time we were told it would solve all our problems."